Scene is Believing.

So I'm sitting there ("there" being my living room), Saturday night, watching Tormented (1960) on "Elvira's Movie Macabre." And like the Mistress of the Dark, I'm about to write it off like a bad debt ... until I get to the wedding scene, which, truth be told, is pretty badass. Actually, from that point on, the film has the nerve to get downright suspenseful, and even a little scary. Watch it, or just stream it and jump to the end—you'll see what I mean. At the very least, you can insert your own jokes about a girl giving a guy head. Haha, I said insert.

Too easy.

Watching Tormented made me think of other films that suck, except for that one scene ...
 

Cabin Fever (2002)

Oh, you thought Cabin Fever would make you afraid of camping. No worries—there are better movies out there for that. But if you're a girl who missed out on the Lilith Fair and hairy hackey-sack barista boys in the early Nineties, then you've now got a good reason to stop shaving. Let's just say that if Eli Roth had made this film in the Seventies—which I'm sure he wished he could have done—sales of Nair would've skyrocketed.

And all she wanted was to wear cutoffs, not cutups.

Yep, I'm talking about that scene (at left), which earned about $1.25 of the $8.00 I spent on the ticket, and made me switch to waxing. Thanks, KNB EFX.

Two-thirds of KNB (NB?) also saved another bad film ...






Mirrors (2008)

Obviously, Alexandre Aja knew that he was polishing a turd dressed as a horror vehicle designed to leverage  Kiefer Sutherland's TV success and revive a dead film career (worked wonders for Courtney Cox—she went from Scream to Scream 4!). Think Michael Keaton and White Noise. But forget all that—we're watching an Aja-KNB collaboration, so the gore FX are, from the start, pretty special, and one scene in particular is jaw-dropping.






Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)

Okay, so she's also called Stirba: Werewolf Bitch, but honestly, we don't care if Sybil Danning is "Xena: Warrior Princess," and the film is called Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. We'll watch her in anything, even if it stinks to high heaven, like Howling II. Come to think of it, Turbo might have made this film a bit better with some ceiling dancing (because Christopher Lee sure as hell couldn't save the film, and he was Lord Summerisle).





But back to Howling II—Danning is super hot, the film is super-not, and the AV members of the Clearasil set knew to skip it entirely and head straight to the end credits, where the best moment is looped within an inch of its shelf life.


Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

The Final Chapter truly lived up to its title, because where that film closed the book of awesome that was the first four F13 films, Part 5 opened up A New Beginning of suckage. This film was so bad that it took kids, Alice Cooper and Horshack from "Welcome Back, Kotter" to revive the franchise with Part 6, plus the introduction of Kane Hodder in Part 7 as added anti-suckage insurance for another four films.

If only Vic had peanut butter instead of an axe ...

It's unfortunate that one good scene in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (besides Tina's scenes, dudes) promises greatness that is ultimately unrealized in the course of 88 minutes. You don't remember the scene? You better axe somebody.